Sen. Craig – The Ten Amendments Senate – June 06, 2000 Mr. CRAIG. Mr.
President, I appear on the floor to speak about a provision of the
Constitution of our country that has been under nearly constant attack for 8
years. In fact, we heard on the floor this morning two Senators speak about
provisions in law that would alter a constitutional right.

The provision I am talking about is part of our Bill of Rights–the first
10 amendments to our Constitution–which protect our most basic rights from
being stripped away by an overly zealous government, including rights that
all Americans hold dear:

The freedom to worship according to one’s conscience; The freedom to speak
or to write whatever we might think; The freedom to criticize our
Government; And, the freedom to assemble peacefully.

Among the safeguards of these fundamental rights, we find the Second
Amendment. Let me read it clearly:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free
State,the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

I want to repeat that.

The second amendment of our Constitution says very clearly that `A well
regulated Militia’ is `necessary’ for the `security of a free State,’ and
that `the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be
infringed.’ What we heard this morning was an effort to infringe upon that
right.

Some–even of my colleagues–will read what I have just quoted from our
Constitution quite differently. They might read `A well regulated Militia,’
and stop there and declare that `the right of the people to keep and bear
Arms’ actually means that it is a right of our Government to keep and bear
arms because they associate the militia with the government. Yet, under
this standard, the Bill of Rights would protect only the right of a
government to speak, or the right of a government to criticize itself, if
you were taking that same argument and transposing it over the first
amendment. In fact, the Bill of Rights protects the rights of people from
being infringed upon by Government–not the other way around.

Of course, we know that our Founding Fathers in their effort to ratify the
Constitution could not convince the citizens to accept it until the Bill of
Rights was established to assure the citizenry that we were protecting the
citizens from Government instead of government from the citizens.

Others say that the Second Amendment merely protects hunting and sport
shooting. They see shooting competitions and hunting for food as the only
legitimate uses of guns, and, therefore, conclude that the Second Amendment
is no impediment to restricting gun use to those purposes.

You can hear it in the way President Clinton assures hunters that his gun
control proposals that will not trample on recreation–though his proposals
certainly walk all over their rights.

In fact, the Second Amendment does not merely protect sport shooting and
hunting, though it certainly does that.

Nor does the second amendment exist to protect the government’s right to
bear arms.

The framers of our Constitution wrote the Second Amendment with a greater
purpose.

They made the Second Amendment the law of the land because it has something
very particular to say about the rights of every man and every woman, and
about the relationship of every man and every woman to his or her
Government.

That is: The first right of every human being, the right of self-defense.

Let me repeat that: The first right of every human being is the right of
self-defense. Without that right, all other rights are meaningless. The
right of self-defense is not something the government bestows upon its
citizens. It is an inalienable right, older than the Constitution itself.
It existed prior to government and prior to the social contract of our
Constitution. It is the right that government did not create and therefore
it is a right that under our Constitution the government simply cannot take
away. The framers of our Constitution understood this clearly.
Therefore, they did not merely acknowledge that the right exists. They
denied Congress the power to infringe upon that right.

Under the social contract that is the Constitution of the United States, the
American people have told Congress explicitly that we do not have the
authority to abolish the American people’s right to defend themselves.
Further, the framers said not only does the Congress not have the power to
abolish that right, but Congress may not even infringe upon that right.
That is what our Constitution says. That is what the Second Amendment
clearly lays out. Our Founding Fathers wrote the Second Amendment to tell
us that a free state cannot exist if the people are denied the right or the
means to defend themselves.

Let me repeat that because it is so fundamental to our freedom. A free
state cannot exist, our free state of the United States collectively, cannot
exist without the right of the people to defend themselves. This is the
meaning of the Second Amendment. Over the years a lot of our citizens and
many politicians have tried to nudge that definition around. But contrary
to what the media and the President say, the right to keep and bear arms is
as important today as it was 200 years ago.

Every day in this country thousands of peaceful, law-abiding Americans use
guns to defend themselves, their families, and their property. Oftentimes,
complete strangers are protected by that citizen who steps up and stops the
thief or the stalker or the rapist or the murderer from going at that
citizen.

According to the FBI, criminals used guns in 1998 380,000 times across
America. Yet research indicates that peaceful, law-abiding Americans, using
their constitutional right, used a gun to prevent 2.5 million crimes in
America that year and nearly every year. In fact, I believe the benefits of
protecting the people’s right to keep and bear arms far outweighs the
destruction wrought by criminals and firearms accidents. The Centers for
Disease Control report 32,000 Americans died from firearm injuries in 1997;
under any estimate, that is a tragedy. Unfortunately, the Centers for
Disease Control do not keep data on the number of lives that were saved when
guns were used in a defensive manner.

Yet if we were to survey the public every year, we would find 400,000
Americans report they used a gun in a way that almost certainly saved either
their life or someone else’s. Is that estimate too high? Perhaps. I hope
it is, because every time a life is saved from violence, that means that
someone was threatening a life with violence. But that number would have to
be over 13 times too high for our opponents to be correct when they say that
guns are used to kill more often than they are used to protect. What they
have been saying here and across America simply isn’t true and the facts
bear that out.

We are not debating the tragedy. We are debating facts at this moment.
They cannot come up with 2.5 million gun crimes. But clearly, through
surveys, we can come up with 2.5 million crimes thwarted every year when
someone used a gun in defense of themselves or their property. In many
cases, armed citizens not only thwarted crime, but they held the suspect
until the authorities arrived and placed that person in custody.

Stories of people defending themselves with guns do not make the nightly
news. It just simply isn’t news in America. It isn’t hot. It isn’t
exciting. It is American. Sometimes when people act in an American way, it
simply isn’t reportable in our country anymore. So the national news media
doesn’t follow it.

Yet two of the school shootings that have brought gun issues to the
forefront in the last year, in Pearl, MS, and Edinboro, PA, were stopped by
peaceful gun owners using their weapons to subdue the killer until the
police arrived. How did that get missed in the story? It was mentioned
once, in passing, and then ignored as people ran to the floor of the Senate
to talk about the tragedy of the killing. Of course the killing was a
tragedy, but it was also heroic that someone used their constitutional right
to save lives in the process.

A third school shooting in Springfield, OR, was stopped because some parents
took time to teach their child the wise use of guns. So when that young man
heard a particular sound coming from the gun, he was able to rush the
shooter, because he knew that gun had run out of ammunition. He was used to
guns. He was around them. He subdued the shooter and saved potentially
many other lives. We have recognized him nationally for that heroic act,
that young high school student of Springfield, OR.

For some reason, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle never want to
tell these stories. They only want to say, after a crisis such as this,
`Pass a new gun control law and call 9-1-1.’ Yet these stories are essential
to our understanding of the right of people to keep and bear arms.

I will share a few of these stories right now. Shawnra Pence, a
29-year-old mother from Sequim, WA, home alone with one of her children,
heard an intruder break into the house. She took her .9 mm, took her child
to the bedroom, and when the 18-year-old criminal broke into the bedroom,
she said, `Get out of my house, I have a gun, get out now.’ He left and the
police caught him. She saved her life and her child’s life. It made one
brief story in the Peninsula Daily news in Sequim, WA.

We have to talk about these stories because it is time America heard the
other side of this debate. There are 2.5 million Americans out there
defending themselves and their property by the use of their constitutional
right.

In Cumberland, TN, a 28-year-old Jason McCulley broke into the home of
Stanley Horn and his wife, tied up the couple at knife-point, and demanded
to know where the couple kept some cash. While Mrs. Horn was directing the
robber, Mr. Horn wriggled free from his restraints, retrieved his handgun,
shot the intruder, and then called the police. The intruder, Jason
McCulley, subsequently died. If some Senators on the other side of the
aisle had their way, perhaps the Horns would have been killed and Jason
McCulley would have walked away.

Earlier today, we heard the Senator from Illinios and the Senator from
California read the names people killed by guns in America. Some day they
may read the name Jason McCulley. I doubt they will tell you how he died,
however, because it doesn’t advance their goal of destroying the Second
Amendment. But As Paul Harvey might say: Now you know the rest of the
story.

Every 13 seconds this story is repeated across America. Every 13 seconds in
America someone uses a gun to stop a crime. Why do our opponents never tell
these stories? Why do the enemies of the right to keep and bear arms ignore
this reality that is relived by 2.5 million Americans every year?
Why is it that all we hear from them is, `Pass a new gun control law, and,
by the way, call 9-1-1.’ I encourage all listening today, if you have heard
of someone using their Second Amendment rights to prevent a crime, to save a
life, to protect another life, then send us your story. There are people
here who desperately need to hear this in Washington, right here on Capitol
Hill This is a story that should be played out every day in the press but
isn’t.

So let’s play it out, right here on the floor of the Senate. Send me those
stories from your local newspapers about that law-abiding citizen who used
his constitutional right of self-defense. Send that story to me, Senator
Larry Craig, Washington, DC, 20510, or send it to your own Senator. Let him
or her know the rest of the story of America’s constitutional rights.

I ask unanimous consent to proceed for one more moment.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. CRAIG. Having said all of this, let there be no mistake. Guns are not
for everyone. We restrict children’s access to guns and we restrict
criminals’ access to guns, but we must not tolerate politicians who tell us
that the Second Amendment only protects the right to hunt. We must not
tolerate politicians who infringe upon our right to defend ourselves from
thieves and stalkers and rapists and murderers. And we must not tolerate
the politician who simply says: `Pass another gun control law and call
9-1-1.’ I yield the floor.